知識は力なり Knowledge is Power
by Icetail1r
Summary: I was six when Sarutobi saw my strength, before that I'd hidden my abilities. And so a compromise was made. I could earn money working for him and he'd gain another Jonin. Mataku, how much more troublesome could this get. Full summary inside
1. Prologue

Full Summary:

I was six when Sarutobi saw my strength, before that I'd hidden my abilities, because if someone realized they'd train me even more. And so a compromise was made. I could earn money working for him and he'd gain another Jonin. Mataku, how much more troublesome could this get.

Prologue – (Must read, important info for the rest of story)

I stared out of the window as I tuned out the droning teacher standing at the front of the room, _Seriously… what is the point of making me sit through these lessons if I've already learnt all this before?...sigh but then again, that was one of the reasons that I was chosen to do this mission. Mataku….._

You see, my name is Nara Shikamaru, I am a high-jounin level ninja in everything…but name. But unlike most other jounin level ninjas in the village I am only twelve; another reason that I was chosen for this specific mission. Now I'm sure you're all now wondering "What in the world is this mission he keeps mentioning?" well then I'll tell you…but I should probably tell you from the very beginning, just so you understand it more thoroughly. I was eight when my battle and strategy prowess was discovered by someone other than my family, the Sandaime. It was the very first time that I had tried training in one of the public training grounds, careful to remain hidden; I checked if there was anyone in a 500 metre radius (my chakra sensing range) of the training area, however, through my own excitement I'd forgotten to calculate in the fact that a ninja above my level would be nearby. Because of that I was found the second I started using chakra.

Though the Sandaime was curious as to why a kid was even doing in ninja only training grounds, the third shinobi war had hardened the man and taught him to never underestimate anyone, therefore leading him to stay hidden and watch as the child started training, since he was obviously an aspiring ninja, the Sandaime continued to watch, if only for his own curiosity to see how determined the child was. For the first fifteen minutes all the child did were light warm ups; jogging around the field and stretching. He was about to leave, assuming he was just a child with dreams of being a ninja, but then the child stopped and started running through a series of hand seals, ram, tiger, rat, monkey, dog, boar, ox, serpent … he recognized those seals, they formed the A-class jutsu Fuuton - Renkuudan (Drilling Air Projectile). Knowing that the jutsu needed great wind chakra manipulation, he rushed towards the child trying to stop him before the last seal was formed and the backlash of uncontrolled chakra destroyed the child. But at the rate he was going, he wouldn't make it. But the child didn't die either, the child completed the Jutsu perfectly and without flaw as the pressured air annihilated the three trees in front of the child.

I was almost six when Sarutobi saw my strength, up until then I had been hiding my abilities, solely because of the fact that it was too troublesome to have someone to realize this and give me extra training, it would also be annoying if that resulted in me being treated differently. So the Sandaime made a compromise for me, I would take missions and work with shinobi of his choice, those whom he deemed trustworthy enough to bear my secret and not treat me differently. All of them will be chosen by the Sandaime based on my level in ability.

The Sandaime also gave me a new trainer, specifically because my clan, which could only teach me so much, mostly being specialists in intellect, strategy and Clan jutsu. I was taught with a young girl whom my new sensei had found orphaned on one of his missions, she was trained not as a Konoha ninja but one of the same loyalties but without the title, she was supposed to become a spy, her not being in any Konoha records would have benefited Konoha a lot, if Konoha had ever given her a mission. My new trainer was part of ANBU, so his techiniques were more effective than a normal Genin sensei, but a normal Genin sensei probably wouldn't think of spending twelve hours a day dedicated to training, he'd taught me so much. But a sad fate met him, after just a year he was labeled a missing-nin, all because of something he did under orders. Now everyone thinks of him as a traitor, only the Sandaime, his other student and I know the truth, but we couldn't do anything to his banishment, political boundaries laid by the elders stopped us from doing anything.

Despite this, as our training was incomplete, so the Hokage personally looked over the previous training schedule and using it as a basis continued to train us. After only 6 months our training was 'complete' as we'd both reached the minimum of high jonin-ANBU level. The other student left the village for her first yet indefinite mission, I was also given a mission related and also indefinite but I was only needed as a courier, so I could live my life normally and only leave when needed. Both were deemed long-term S-class and to be kept as a secret of the same rank, so I'm not really allowed to tell you anything more than what I've already told you.

This carried on for about two years, by then, a few jounin in Konoha knew of my abilities while four people of my age group knew as well. Ino and Chouji were told a year after the discovery when they observed that I was constantly gone for long periods of time and since they were my friends they were sure to know if I was or wasn't in the village, they already knew that I was stronger than them but they didn't know by how much. When they found out just how much stronger, they completely freaked out, Ino didn't talk to me for a whole week, she thought our 'relationship' was better than that. But they got over it after a while, they then saw the advantage of no one knowing their strength and decided to improve and hide theirs as well. Chouji didn't plan on revealing their strength until they'd either graduated or when they were given their first C-ranked mission. However Ino just wanted to 'wow' everyone when they actually became ninjas, in the very beginning but she soon saw the real advantages and agreed to what Chouji decided to do. Hinata and Neji were next to find out, only half a year later…but not quite how I'd expected.

I was out for a midnight stroll, I don't usually sleep well after short assassination missions, too much adrenalin if I'm not too injured. Halfway through my usual route around the ninja district, I saw light flashing off a metallic surface, judging by the fact that it reflected off at the average height of an averge shinobi, I could make an educated guess that it was a person. There was also the fact that it was moving and flashed by too fast for a civilian, but you can never go too far with deduction. I didn't know if they were from the village or not but being outside at this time was not common for Leaf ninja's, so I decided to tail them. I landed silently on a thick branch once I got within range, I saw, with the aid of the bright moonlight, two young Hyuugas, a girl and a boy, who were probably around the same age as me, fighting another man.

They were in quite a large clearing, reasonably far from the Hyuuga compound, and there was practically nothing else surrounding them but trees, more trees, and even more trees. It was the perfect place for a battle to take place, no civilians dared come into the forest. Ninjas are known to like taking their frustrations out on trees. And honestly, they were faring rather well against, from what I could tell off his skills and hitaiate, a high level chuunin, maybe jounin, from kumo. Come to think of it why would you send a chuunin into the middle of enemy territory, arrogance? Or is it not a mission? It's more than likely that this wasn't a mission, he was probably hoping for a promotion or recognition by bringing back a set of Hyuuga eyes. No Kage would be stupid enough to send a chuunin directly into enemy territory, even if he was a jounin, he would either be with a team and another back-up team or with an ANBU team. But that really doesn't seem to be the case since the guy's being driven back by a couple of pre-genin and no one's come to help him.

The two already had their Byakugan activated so I assumed that they'd already noticed my partially suppressed chakra. Neither of them had indicated that they knew I was here, so I took that to my advantage. Channeling a small amount of chakra into my hands, I started to form hand seals. Because of the chakra put into my hands the two Byakugan users would see the seals perfectly clearly, I used the standard Konoha seals. _You . Two . Push . Back . I . Bind . You . Hit. Enemy . Unconscious. _

Seeing new found determination in their fluid attacks, I knew that they'd understood me. I lowered myself from the tree silently and continued to suppress my chakra until I was only just visible to the two Hyuugas. Quickly covering the last few meters, I brought myself directly behind the Kumo ninja. Peering through the undergrowth in front of me, I waited for the offending ninja to get closer. Just one more _step_ … NOW! I flashed through the two seals needed and whispered _Kage Nui_ (Shadow Sewing) _I never understood the need of shouting out your jutsu to the opponent that you wanted to defeat, _my own shadow moved forward as it slipped towards its target, melding with the shadows of nature as it started to split and rise off the ground. The tendrils of the shadow hovered as they reached their target, then they shot forward and pierced the man in his knees. Effectively helpless under pain, two crushed knees and his blood flowing freely, the ninja crumpled and fell with undignified scream. The young girl, who'd been standing in front of the fallen man, comprehended what happened and rushed forward, jabbing, with a chakra coated hand, the tenketsu located at the base of the neck to knock him out.

That was the very first time I met both Hinata and Neji. After Hinata had knocked the kumo ninja out we introduced ourselves, both parties questioned at how the other reached their level of ability and both reached the answer that they began training with their family at the age of five, which was the standard age for heirs to start training in ninja families, members who weren't heirs only started training to be a ninja at eight_. _Neji, because of being appointed Hinatas guardian started training at five as well. The first three years for the successors were spent on advancing ninja training, all three of us had easily soaked up the basics of being a ninja and had moved on to practical work very quickly, the next two years are usually used for etiquette and clan politics. However, our own training was quickly accelerated, we didn't need the whole of the appointed times to learn everything put out for us, this resulted in us receiving more advance training, though that didn't slow our progress. It ended up that the two Hyuugas were high chuunin level by the time we were ten, the only reason they weren't jounin level was because they lacked experience, something that I'd had for three years. I myself had probably reached high jounin or ANBU level.

It also seemed that the Nara and the Hyuuga knew that announcing their prodigies to the world didn't help them in any area other than politically, so we were kept a secret. By being kept a secret it assisted the clan much more in terms of military prowess, we became their secret weapon, small bits of information was leaked that we had a powerful member but that was all. We became the best of friends after that. They'd also chosen to tell the Hokage about their skills and work with me as a team, seeing as that they were both at high chunin level. Their specialty in taijutsu complimented my focus in mid-long range attacks, using the fact that the opponent was too busy defending from the Hyuuga attacks. But that wasn't our specialty, our specialty was in infiltration, assassination or recon, with two well developed Byakugans on the team we would always be aware of enemies, making them easy to avoid and with my shadow techniques, we were always unseen to them.

Now that you know that, I can get to that mission all of you are wondering about, Neji, Hinata and I were all put into the academy to keep an eye on a certain person named Naruto, you see the Hokage had reason believed that he is also stronger than he seemed to be, but because of the way that he was treated during his childhood the Sandaime wanted to make sure that he didn't want to betray Konoha. You see Naruto is something…no someone called a jinchuuriki, a human sacrifice, fifteen years ago the Kyuubi attacked Konoha and the Yondaime Hokage had no choice but to take a newborn child and seal the Kyuubi within him.

Now the Hokage wanted to put the whole team on this mission and because Neji is older than Hinata he used the fact that he was Hinatas guardian, therefore allowing him to be closer to us after class at the same time. Sadly this also meant that we couldn't just leave the academy when we completed the mission, if we did the discretion we needed as the Hokages best team specializing in stealth, we needed to keep a low profile to stop other countries catching wind of us. That discretion would be compromised if people found out we dropped out of the academy then saw us working as high level ninjas afterwards.

By the way, just so you know, everyone who knows of our secret only knows we are on a mission, we are often seen coming out of the jounin or ANBU briefing and debriefing rooms. Only the jounins that we've worked with actually know what the mission is Kakashi, Kurenai and Anko are the people that we trust, we know we can trust them because they helped us through some of our hardest times. Predominantly our first kill, first interrogation…Anko and Kurenai were especially helpful to Hinata after almost getting kidnapped…again but after a much harder battle. Hinata had been getting the impression that she was burdening us when she'd allowed enemy ninjas into our camp during her watch however she was ultimately outmatched because she was facing two jounin and one chuunin. She'd held up for ten to fifteen minutes before being sent crashing back into our camp and waking us. After that Hinata used a quick regeneration technique whilst Neji, Anko and I distracted the other ninja before joining us in the fray to help us defeat them, we didn't come out unscathed and Hinata would have to sleep after fifteen hours as the regeneration technique she'd used was specially designed for escape, giving the user fifteen hours to escape the vicinity. Hinata kept blaming herself for our minor wounds after that, it wasn't a very big psychological problem but it did take more than a week for her to revert back to normal.

I stared at the clouds drifting outside, this is going to be one long year I thought trying desperately not to think of my current bout of boredom.

End of Prologue

Mataku – an expression that means you are annoyed, exasperated, or just bored out of your mind.

Kami – God.

Tenketsu – Chakra points, Hyuugas use them to immobilize or cut off chakra flow.

AN- Thx for reading!

Since, I'd had this idea in my head for so long I decided to just put it up, but as you can tell it still doesn't have a title, so if anyone has any ideas (even with the limited information) Please don't hesitate to tell me.

Also updates will be varied, please read profile for excuse.

Lastly I don't own Naruto

Icetail


	2. Chapter 1

Start of Chapter One –

**Sandaime's POV**

_Sigh…they'd better be thankful that I did that for them._ I thought looking at the letter placed in front of me.

_Dear Sandaime-sama,_

_Here are my recommendations for this years graduating class:_

_Team 7_

_Genin – Iretai Akira, Naia Hana, Jinta Kyōru_

_Sensei – Shiranui Genma_

_Team 8_

_Genin – Aburame Yura, Iyanabi Riku, Naita Yoroi_

_Sensei – Hatake Kakashi_

_Team 9_

_Genin – Hyuuga Neji, Higurashi Tenten, Rock Lee_

_Sensei – Maito Gai_

_All others in this graduating class had failed the original Genin exam_

_Regards,_

_Umino Iruka_

And on top of team 7 and 8 I'd put a big red FAIL on top, but on top of Gai's team, there was a smaller, cursive, green pass. I thought back to when Gai had come in to report if his team had passed or failed, it was quite amusing in some ways, but annoying in others, namely paperwork-wise.

"Might Gai, will you please report how your team did on your test." The Sandaime said.

"Of course, Hokage-sama. I Might Gai of Team 9 have officially passed Team 9."

I raised a single eyebrow and stared "Really, but I heard that your team's teamwork had been an utter failure?" I said, obviously skeptical as I remembered what Neji had told me after his test. _"Sandaime-sama, my team had displayed horrendous teamwork, It is highly unlikely that we have passed."_

"Well it was but, I also believe that their skills complement each other a lot, all three have very promising futures as ninjas." Then his voice suddenly low and barely comprehensible, he said "However there was a very bad ninja who couldn't throw a kunai."

"I'm sorry if I am wrong, but I heard that one certain Neji Hyuuga failed in every attempt to be cooperative with his team mates and went after the bells all by himself." Mentally smirking as I imagined The Neji Hyuuga playing the idiot of the team. "He even managed to drop a kunai while trying to throw it! This does not qualify him to even have passed the origin pre-test."

His face warping into shock, Gai immediately tried to defend the team. "But Hokage-sama! You can't simply fail the whole team just because of one student, Lee and Tenten did extremely well, cooperating well using their close range taijutsu and ranged weaponry abilities worked very well, they even managed to force me into a corner…"

"I'm sorry Gai but I simply cannot allow that to happen, the most I could do is allow Lee and Tenten to be free lance Genins for the time being. You can't be their official teacher but you can teach them in your spare time, but you will have to be put back on active roster."

What a hectic start to my day. As much as I wanted to outright refuse Gai, Tenten and Lee did show promising talents that would definitely improve Konoha's military power in the long run… sigh, what I wouldn't give for an extra-large bottle of sake right now. I thought eyeing the ever growing piles of paper work on my desk.

"Mataku, Inu!" He shouted as an ANBU poofed into the room " Get Shikamaru' team here immediately."

**Hinata's POV**

"…Shika, what do you think we can do in this last year of the academy? I mean with Neji and the people who failed in the class above there as well…"I said staring at the clouds above us, we were on Shikamaru's favorite cloud gazing spot. It was on a small hill in the west side of Konoha, there were no trees around and the lush grass always gave off a soothing sensation, it always calmed the three of us down.

"Hina, I was just going to leave a shadow clone there now that we don't have to spy on Naruto anymore, do you really want make more trouble for yourself and spend time at sch-ANBU-san, what do you want?" Shikamaru said.

"HEBI-CHAN!" Hinata squealed "We haven't seen you in ages!"

"Hina, I'm on duty." The one dubbed Hebi-chan said, quite exasperatingly.

"Hehe Gomen…"

"I miss the stutter blush and faint version of you that you put on in public…" Hebi said, hands working quickly as she pried Hinata off of her body.

"Anko, you know very well that I hate that façade even more than I hate _them._" Hinata announced, her face almost immediately changing into that of disgust, as she remembered her first solo mission which took her to a large black market of slaves.

"…I know Hina, well…back to the matter at hand. Inu has already gone to get Neji-san, Hokage-sama wants to see your team, something about team arrangements."

"Mataku, we'll go now… Arigatou…Anko-chan" Shikamaru said, sinking into his shadow. Hinata sighed then turned to face Hebi, only to feel an intense amount of concentrated chakra slowly leaking out of her friend. Briskly run through a set of seals she promptly flashed herself out through a vortex of white wisps of chakra.

"SHIKAMARUUU! I TOLD YOU NEVER TO CALL ME THAT. ESPECIALLY WHEN I'M ON DUTY!"She screamed her anger almost visible in the morning light.

**Shikamaru's POV**

_Hehe. Mataku, Anko always gets like that when I call her Anko-chan…come to think of it why is it only me that she gets mad at, everyone else can call her Anko-chan. Well Hatake can't call her that but he's a pervert, that's understandable, does she think that I'm a pervert? But I don't openly gawk at her, so why… maybe I just annoy her, sigh Oh well I guess it's good entertainment, it's always amusing to rile her up, it's truly amazing the amount of damage she can do to the human psyche whenever she's mad...Mataku, since when have I ever thought that suffering people were amusing…Mataku, Anko's rubbing off on me…_

I looked around my shadow realm, it was like a personal pocket dimension I could disappear into when I use certain kinds of Kage type jutsu, but most of the time it's just where Nara clan members would come to practice and perfect their shadow affinity, your control could be easily practiced by molding the shadows in the realm. If you had no control over your shadow chakra then it would have splashes of bright colours dotted around, the better your control the darker or less colours are seen, mine is covered with colours like black, grey and brown. I haven't gotten around to getting the grey to turn darker yet, but I'm proud…there was a lot of bright pink _*shivers_ before I started practicing chakra control. As you can probably guess the time in shadow realm is a bit longer than the original world, one minute in the shadow realm equals half a second in our world and the kage shunshin takes about one second, so I should be coming up into the Hokage's office right…about…now. I felt a push as shadows started pushing me towards a small hole showing the Sandaimes desk, it got closer and closer until my head poked through the top, the rest of my body followed quickly.

"Hiruzen-sama, I trust that the team arrangements are as we predicted?" I said just as a panicked Hinata flashed in, her white chakra moving erratically around her.

"SHIKAMARUUU! I TOLD YOU NEVER TO CALL ME THAT. ESPECIALLY WHEN I'M ON DUTY!"

"ahhh, Shika-kun! Onegai…Never leave me with her like that ever again!" Hinata said in a quivering, quiet voice.

"Shikamaru, you think you'd learn after she told you not to call her that for, I dunno, over seventy times."

"Relax Neji, it's not like she'd hurt me…badly…let's just say that she won't kill me…anyway, you have to admit that it's amusing" I said.

"Team Kage, despite the amount of effort Neji used to be a completely unskilled, naive and unprepared child, Gai still somehow thought the team would work out."

"What? What kind of jounin would knowingly suggest passing a team with one absolutely useless member, no offense Neji." Hinata voiced.

I looked over to my left, trying to see how Neji would take this, _uh oh, I wouldn't want to be in the Sandaimes place right now…Mataku_

Nejis whole body was quivering, his hair, now slightly loose dangled over his forehead and covered his eyes. But despite his appearance, that wasn't the scariest thing, more concentrated and controlled killing intent that I'd thought Neji could control was leaking and rushing straight at the Sandaime Hokage.

"You mean to tell me that I'd had to push my pride aside and act stupid for NOTHING!"

"Of course not. If I did then you would react like this and actually kill me." Hiruzen said

**~Insert period of confused silence~**

"What do you mean Sarutobi, you can't have just made a two man cell? It's against the law…but then again you can override the law. _Mataku. This would've been so much easier if Hinata and I were a year older or Neji was a year younger_"

"No, I didn't do that but come to think of it that may have been a better idea… Anyway I opted to just make Tenten and Lee freelance Genins, Gai won't be their official teacher so they can look for other teachers but I believe that Gai will try his best to teach them anyways. However since Gai is no longer an official teacher he can no longer be on the support roster, so I had to put him back on active. However when comes the time when there is a free Genin that can join them to form a full cell, Gai will be the one to take on their team and officially become their teacher. But until that happens they won't be able to do any missions that specifically need a three man cell, they can however do D-ranked missions."

"Mataku, then why did you call us here then…I'm sure it's not just to tell us that part of my plan didn't work." I said.

"Correct Shikamaru, I've assembled you to tell you that since you have completed your mission I would like to know how you plan to spend your last year in the Academy?"

"Aa. Ok then, _Hiruzen_" Hinata asked as she leant forward, a smug smirk teasing her lips. "I would like to formally request our removal from the academy or for us to take the Genin exam immediately and return to our usual missions."

"Hinata-sama is right, we really shouldn't spend a useless year cooped up in the academy, Sandaime-sama" Neji droned in that monotone voice of his.

"I agree, team kage, but what would people say when they found out that Neji passed with flying colours in another exam right after his initial failure with Gai's team."

I fought the urge to roll my eyes as I voiced the obvious routes we could take to avoid questioning "Hokage-sama, with all due respect, that is an easy aspect to be rid of… the easiest route we could take would be to just tell everyone of our mission and get it over with, but because of our own terms… we could just send a kage bunshin to take our place during school time. We could use a chakra seal so the bunshin would support itself." _Just like how you could use kage Bunshin to do you paperwork for you._

"Sigh, I guess there is no way of keeping you together with your peers is there."

"Hai, Hokage-sama, we would very much prefer not to continue training in things we already know about. Especially along with…novices in our trade." Neji said, a sneer creeping into his voice.

"I agree with Neji, Hokage-sama, our... classmates have no experience and they are too naïve, it is very difficult to pretend to be like them, we are not what you would say as normal students in our class." Hinata said.

"So it's settled, you will resume your duties as team kage, your names will be returned to the active roster and you will be liable to take solo and / or team missions. If the three of you would like to hand in your mission reports. If the three of you would like to hand in your mission reports tomorrow, then everything should be set. Neji, Hinata. Dismissed." Hiruzen said

Pressing the tips of his fingers onto his temple, the Sandaime waited for a while, just to make sure that my two teammates were out of hearing range, he then sighed and flicked his right wrist. The ANBU stationed in the room, disappearing at the order. He then turned to me.

I stood awaiting the order that was bound to come, and come it did when the Sandaime stared levelly at my eyes and said one word. "Report."

At his word I immediately put on a mask of professionalism and recounted any useful information regarding my mission. "There has not been any significant progress to the current amount of information that we have gathered, but the next meeting is scheduled for the next fifteenth of this month. It was only yesterday that I'd received fifteen pulses from her through the seal." I said, my left hand sub-consciously reaching towards my right bicep, only stopping when I'd realised that I'd almost stopped my report. I continued, hoping that the Hokage didn't notice my slip. "And since the next meeting place is just in Waterfall, it shouldn't take more than a day to get there and back. Also, since we have just received information from him, I doubt that he will have anything more for a while."

"Good, the fifteenth is next Tuesday so you can leave on the fourteenth." The Hokage said.

"Yes, Hokage-sama"

The tension that had unknowingly built up over the course of just several minutes, completely dissipated as the need for secrecy faded, I sighed as I wondered once again at the way that my present teammates could have nothing to do with the mission.

The Hokage, as if knowing what I'd been thinking, sighed along with me and asked me how my team was coping.

I replied with a stare of disbelief, he had been the one that ordered that they couldn't know anything about it. He was the one that could allow me to tell them.

The Sandaime sighed again and said "Shikamaru, however much you want to tell them, what could they do? I want as little people as possible to know about this mission of yours, that is why it's classed as and S-Class secret."

"But they could help me, in the village of course and they wouldn't tell a single soul. Hokage-sama, you of all people should know that!" I cried.

"Of course I know, but they aren't need, you alone are fulfilling the job very well. And must I remind you, there will always be someone more skilled than you, what would happen if someone overheard you and leaked the information? It could make the village panic, it could put your teammates in danger, it could put _them_ in danger Shikamaru. Think. Control your emotions. You already know this." The Hokage said, standing up and slamming his hands onto his desk just to emphasize his point.

I stared at him, thinking once again. _Kuso, I did it again. What must I do to stop these pointless and illogical bouts of emotional instability! I'm supposed to be intelligent, yet I can't even keep hold of reasoning whilst in the middle of mental turmoil. Mataku, now Hiruzen probably having another headache...again._

"You're right Sarutobi, I'm sorry for my insubordination, I can assure you that it won't happen again." I said solemnly, my head bowed to show respect, something that I'd rarely had to do anymore.

"It's fine Shikamaru." Sarutobi said, sitting back down and his hand automatically returning to his temple. "I can only imagine how hard it must be for you to have been keeping this secret from your friends for, what is it, two years now. Even though it isn't much, you became so close, them being your only real friends in Konoha, it must be tough."

"Hai, even though they completely understand that I can't tell them, it still hurts for me to think that they know that I have to keep such a big secret from them." I smiled wistfully. _If only it was that simple Sarutobi._

The Hokage smiled back, only for his expression to quickly change from realization to panic. The Sandaime let out a groan as he reached for a brush propped neatly next to a small ink grinder. "Shikamaru. Dismissed" He said, without even looking at me and grabbing a piece of paper from the top of the ever growing pile of forms and mission reports.

" Yes sir" I said walking my usual, lazy pace to the door. Chuckling as I hear Sarutobi mumble about how 'the stupid paper-work keeps piling up without him noticing'

Once outside I stared up at the clouds._ That was too close for comfort, Mataku, all this stress is getting to me. I can't break down again, or else my reputation to think rationally could be ruined and I be brought out of my position._


	3. Chapter 2

Start of Chapter 2 –

It's been a few days since Shikamaru had left the Hokage's office. A new year had already started at the Academy, having two runs of school each year had its advantages, the children could either choose to immediately start their new school year or have a long holiday then start again. This meant that the classes were different every time and the age groups weren't necessarily that similar either. Coupled with how easy it was to need to repeat a year, everything was always mixed up. But since this was the case, it allowed people to work together more easily, simply by just knowing more people could increase your people skills a lot, whether it is to befriend, lead or trick them, having extra skills never hurts.

Since their new school year the three of them have been receiving missions, they usually only received small missions that only brought them a day or two outside of Konoha, however since they were all still living under their clan and they still hadn't spent all of their pay from their most recent S-Ranked mission, just some random delivery of a small piece of diamond jewellery.

It was laughable how some of the simplest missions that could almost rival C-Ranks could be raised by so many ranks. And it was all because of how much money some people could fork out.

Time passed quickly, the week flew by quickly and the date of Shikamaru's classified mission arrived, much faster than anticipated.

**Neji's POV**

I watched as Shikamaru ate his Ramen, it was always like this before he went out for another of his missions. He knows that both Hinata and I understand that he can't tell us anything about it. If we weren't told there will always be a reason for it, and since it was kept by both Sarutobi and Shikamaru, it must be a very valid reason. Not that I wouldn't be much better for the job, no matter what it is, but S-Class secrets or missions only involve people who were directly involved or people who are absolutely need in order to succeed. He's got to stop beating himself up. I was just going to say something, but Hinata spoke up before me.

"Shika-kun, stop it." She said

"Huh, stop what?" He said, startled and staring at the both of us when I sighed at his answer.

"Taicho, we know what you're thinking about, you think about it every time you receive another mission related to it." I said

"Mataku, can't hide anything from you can I. I know that you guys understand why I can't tell you but sometimes I'm just not rational enough about it" Shikamaru said, staring into his now empty bowl.

"Taicho, you need to go now, but we want you to promise not to think badly about the mission, you already know that we know and understand what your responsibility is. You shouldn't make an even bigger problem out of it by worrying about something that you can't change." Hinata said, walking over and hugging him from behind.

"Thanks Hinata" Shikamaru said turning on his stool and returning the hug, he then reached down and pulled his dark green pack up from underneath the table. He walked over to me and we instinctively raised our hands and slammed them into the middle. It wasn't quite a high-five, it was similar but we ended up holding hands at eye level for a while.

"You too Neji" He said, waving to us and shouting "I'll see you tomorrow!"

He turned away from us, sinking as he walked casually into his own shadow.

"Now" I said turning to Hinata.

"What?" She said. I just stared, hoping that she'd remember what we'd talked about just before this meeting. My hopes were shot down as her questioning look continued.

"Hinata-sama, you have a clan meeting now." I said in exasperation.

"Eh-heh, oh yeah. Um, I forgot?" She said, stumbling over her words.

I sighed as I dragged her towards the compound._ Mataku, will she ever remember….Kuso, Shikamaru's rubbing off on me._

**End POV**

Warm wind swept past Shikamaru as he skipped from tree to tree, it was common for Fire to have strong, but warm winds at this time of year. It was what the weather would be like for most of the year until winter came, by then it would turn slightly colder. It'd be cold enough to warrant thicker coats but not enough to expect snow.

As Shikamaru ran through the forest, he began to think, remembering the last time he'd had face to face contact from his trainer and fellow student, they still keep in touch with him through the communication seals they had, disguised as a tattoo symbolizing their element. Shikamaru's own seal showing three tendrils of shadows curling and interlocking. They also had passed information between them through scrolls, giving to each other through more discreet means. That they were to meet face to face this time showed just how important it was. Even though the risk of their cover being blown was much higher, this meant that the information was urgent and had to be gotten through to the Hokage quickly, without having to break a code or riddle that was usually used on any information place on scrolls.

The three of them had used the seals during their missions before, it allowed them to speak to each other through the seal, and it also allowed them to transfer chakra, usually in the form of chakra pulses. Pushing chakra through the seal was only a small ability of the seal, it only allowed for small amounts of chakra to pass through, but it allowed the other users to feel the pulses. They utilized that to their advantage since using the seal for speech would use chakra, although not many people would be able to sense the minute amount leaked, the missions we went on guaranteed that they'd meet high classed ninjas, this meant that anyone they chanced upon, however low that possibility was, could be good enough to be able to sense it. They couldn't take the chance so they created a code, basing it on the Morse code so it was quite similar, they just rearranged the number of dots and spaces for each letter. Therefore since it proved so useful, chakra pulses became a regular thing between them.

The range was almost infinite anyway, since it was self sustained chakra, all it needed was for its surroundings to have a chakra system, and since technically everything had chakra, then everything would have a chakra system, even if it was dead. This pretty much meant that the pulses could get anywhere, the ground had its own system, metals came from the ground, wood came from the trees. Everything had its own chakra system, the only things they could speculate on was the air itself.

Throughout the day, just as he'd hoped, nothing had happened. Shikamaru had almost reached Waterfall by eleven in the morning, having left at around six thirty, since he was almost there he stole into the thick undergrowth and changed into some civilian clothing he'd brought, he now wore a simple but too-restricting tan colored T-shirt a pair of less restricting pants called track-suit bottoms and some very uncomfortable close-toed black and white "trainers" _How could these uncomfortable things do anything to further your training?_ He thought to himself incredulously. Looking at his watch he saw that it was still quite early, plenty of time to get to the meeting point.

Remembering the message he'd received through the seal, he thought. _Mataku, why couldn't he have been more direct with his message. Hmph, since I was told to collect it on the fifteenth, that means that he should be able to stay around up till fifteen hundred hours if he didn't tell me anything else. Now I need to get a map._

Shikamaru looked around, he was in a small town near the border of Waterfall. The town he was in was mostly made up of merchant and other traders, it was logical since a lot of the trade routes passed through here. It seemed to him that most of the buildings in town were hotels or inns to accommodate the large amount of people that came and went throughout the days. _Practical, no one would suspect another random civilian roaming the streets._

He walked up to one of the rare local stores and purchased a standard map they'd had of their town, these maps were widely sold all over town, especially targeting the merchants and traders.

The map, like all others, was separated into a grid. Taking a turn into a less crowded alley, he jumped casting a genjutsu along the way up, he landed on one of the lower roof tops. Utilizing the genjutsu to its full potential, he headed for the highest building he could find. Once there he dropped the genjutsu that had been helping him redirect the crowd's attention.

Immediately casting another genjutsu to replace the last, his appearance slowly changed to match that of the floor, a mixture of brown and grey slowly crept up his skin and clothing to camouflage him into the cement floor beneath him. This jutsu was very useful, but it did have certain requirements, your movements had to be quite slow or else it wouldn't camouflage quick enough, so in short if you moved too quickly you'd show up even more. However in his situation, since the background was so similar, he could move relatively normally without caution.

He pulled the map out and took out a pencil, since the town wasn't very big the grid reference only went up to sixteen by seventeen. Shikamaru took his piece of charcoal and crossed out the outer two rows on the north and south side, doing the same to the two columns on the west and east side as well. Because the three of them, his teacher, his fellow student and himself, agreed that having meeting points in the outer ring of towns would seem too suspicious, they would always rule out the outer two sections on the edges.

He then renumbered each of the grid references to make up a new map in the middle with the section he hadn't crossed out. Then taking the number fifteen he split it, making a one and a five. This meant that the meeting point would be in the new coordinates of (1,5).

Then applying six figure grid references, he added a fifty one, just an inverted fifteen, to the end of the one and a fifteen to the end of the five. Thus making (151,515) following his coordinates, found that it pointed to a small park next to one of the bakeries down at Koshu street.

His lips quirked upwards when he saw that it wasn't very far from where he currently was. It didn't take long for him to reach it.

…**POV**

_Aah, he's finally arrived._

I watched as he leaned against one of the bigger trees in the more secluded area of the park, I almost immediately felt the three quick chakra pulses through the seal that was the code to say I've arrived. I sent two back to him, each pulse lasting up to a second to tell him that I was already there. Seeing no reason to dawdle any longer I checked my henge and walked out to meet him. _Heh, I wonder if he'll recognize the henge._ Said henge was the one I used to use on our missions together as jounin instead of ANBU. I was too well known to be able to not attract attention outside the walls of Konoha. The henge was male, of course, had light brown hair and dull green eyes, he was about half a head taller than Shikamaru but his pony tail pretty much guaranteed you wouldn't notice. Like Shikamaru, the henge also wore casual civilian clothing consisting of a bland blue shirt and some pants called 'jeans'. How anyone can fight in any of these civilian clothes is beyond me. But no matter how restricting they were, just wearing them kept lots of unwanted enemies away.

"Good to see you made it Shika." I said, walking out from the foliage in front of him. I brought my hand up to my seal, the communication seal I had was on my back, at the top left, like it was just behind my shoulder. My seal was designed to look like a flame, none of us really bothered to think of something for it to look like so we all just made it show our main element.

He looked up, seemingly surprised for a moment. "Good to see you too, sensei." He said, smiling as he subconsciously returned the gesture by moving his left hand up to his right bicep.

I smiled, watching him. "I told you to stop calling me that. I swear the both of you do that on purpose to make me feel old."

"Hey, she does it out of respect and habit. I on the other hand, do it for that very reason… sensei." He said laughing.

We shared greetings for a while, but there was a reason for the meeting, I was just about to interrupt but it seems that Shikamaru had beaten me to it.

"So, what is so important that it brought up a face to face meeting instead of the usual walk-past-each-other-and-crash-while-passing-info-through-a-scroll." He said, through the seal. "Anyway sensei, how are you these days?" He said continuing the rally of small talk verbally.

I chuckled at his direct approach. "We do not do that, it's a much more delicate process in which we plan where we crash, when we crash, how we crash and how the scroll gets passed between us." I said back, once again through the seal. "I'm fine thank you, it's been ages since I've seen you, how're things back home? Anything changed since I left?" I said, answering his verbal question from before.

"No not much…"

There was a moment of silence before I finally said.

"They've almost found it."

Shikamaru's head flinched, almost as if concealing a jerky movement.

"Oh" Shikamaru said, not even bothering to say that through the seal.

**Shikamaru's POV**

_Kuso! And I was hoping that we'd have at least a year more to prepare the village to protect Naruto. We haven't even started on making alliances with the villages that have jinchuuriki. Naruto doesn't even know that he's a jinchuuriki yet. He hasn't had the time to prepare! Heck, the village hasn't had the time to prepare. _

_Okay, calm down, we just need to reorganize the schedule. Naruto's training needs to be fast-forwarded, the village security needs to be raised steadily, the council needs to be subdued before Akatsuki starts to collect jinchuuriki, the spies need to find out where the other villages stand in this situation a lot quicker, we also need to create solid allies quickly, other jinchuuriki also need to be trained and informed of their situation, we also need to put more effort into finding the bijuu medium. Argh, I can't think of this now._

I took a step back, leaning on the tree behind me for support. "Fuck" I said.

His eyebrow rose "Since when did you start swearing Shika?"

"Sensei, we were behind schedule even before you told me that, this just pulls us back even further. Now that we have even less time I really don't know how I'm going to organize everything to be done on time! You have no idea what kind of stress that puts me through." I said, careful to use words that could be easily misunderstood.

I sighed as I slammed my head into my hands, staring ahead of me, my eyes finally showing the stress I was under.

"Damn it, Sensei, I've already broken down twice, once in front of my new friends and once in front of the Hokage. Both times I've had to cover it up with worry over my teammates, both times I've had to pretend to think irrationally! They do not need to know that what I am doing is causing me so much stress, they need not to be put in any more unnecessary danger!" I shouted through the seal.

"I know that Shikamaru!" He shouted back, equally loudly.

I winced at the volume, stabbing right through my mind. Head back into my hands, I told him quietly, once again through the seal. "That's three times now. Heh, what a life we have, ne, sensei."

"And this life can be amended and improved once this is over." He replied "Shikamaru, we did not choose this path for ourselves, we were also not chosen because of our skills, we were chosen because we were at the right place but at the wrong time. We were all content in our positions in both life and rank. But we need to be strong now. It is up to us whether or not the fourth shinobi war shall come to be or not, be strong Shika."

"Like it is as easy as you say Sensei, you don't have to constantly hide what you're doing from the people around you. You just have the Akatsuki who are, as I quote 'Completely uncaring as to whether or not there is any loyalty in the organization, there is only the promise of power that keeps them around'." I said, staring at the ground. "But I will do my best, I may have to be taken off active duty though. Mataku, this is going to be such a drag."

He smiled at me. "There's the Shikamaru I know, uncaring to everything in the world."

"Hey, like you have any room to talk, you were as anti-social as a person could ever be when you first became our sensei, sensei." I taunted, making sure to pronounce every single syllable on the last 'sensei'.

"I told you to stop calling me that, it really makes me feel far too old."He said, mirth dancing in his eyes.

I smiled back as I started to walk away.

"Hai, hai." I said, looking back over my shoulder.

"Itachi."


	4. Chapter 3

Start of Chapter 3 –

As Shikamaru walked towards the Hokage tower, he thought about what had just happened. His meeting with Itachi had brought many things into light, so many things needed to be re-prioritised, so many things need to be done. Among all of his newest problems was how he would be able to schedule all that needed to be done into such a short time. But that wasn't really what he was thinking about at the time...

"_Shikamaru, wait." Itachi said, just as Shikamaru turned to leave. "There is one last thing that had required our meeting."_

"_What, more bad news?" Shikamaru said, Itachi didn't respond._

"_Mataku, what is it? It can't be worse than what you've already told me." He said with a steady voice fixed in a bored tone. _

_Itachi eyed him, seeing the facade almost immediately. He wasn't his sensei and friend for nothing. Shikamaru's posture and eyes told him everything. The farce being used now was the one that he had taught him, the one Itachi had used whilst in ANBU, to him, even the mask didn't really help, the voice and body language were just as easy to pry someone's emotions from._

"_I'm sorry, but the deceiver has been found" He said, pausing for just a moment as if he'd been thinking._

"_At the very root of the problem."_

_Shikamaru's head whipped up, staring at Itachi. "What." He asked, before promptly asking another set of questions through the seal. "Are you sure? Did you actually meet him face to face?"_

_He only nodded._

The phrase that Itachi had used would have sounded completely different to a normal passerby, but to Shikamaru, it meant something completely different.

It meant that the spy inside of Konoha had been found. More so, the fact that Itachi named him 'root' told him a lot, it told Shikamaru that one of Konoha's most respected Shinobi and Elder had betrayed Konoha.

Danzo, being the spy made Shikamaru's list of complications even larger. Even though it was supposed to be disbanded 'Root' was once a large part of Konoha, up to sixty percent of the villages Shinobi were connected to it, whether it was politically, physical interaction or they had actually been part of it. Another eighty percent of said Shinobi are very likely to still house loyalty to Root over the village.

As the name Root suggests, this sector of tokubetsu ANBU are Konoha's roots, they held up the village and dealt with all the things that Konoha don't want to show the clients. So in short, Root is what dealt explicitly with the unofficial assassinations to benefit the village, they also dealt with any deals that need to be made with missing-nin or other civilian criminals (many things about criminals are only known throughout the criminal industry).

The Sandaime, like all the past Kages, didn't like the fact that Konoha was connected to such underhanded dealings. Though the other Kages recognised its help and allowed it to continue, Sarutobi was slightly blinded by a peaceful vision. He wanted Konoha to have a 'pure' front, so instead reasoned that Konoha would still prosper without it and disbanded it. Punctuated with an inspiring speech, most people didn't complain thinking that the Sandaime knew best and it would help Konoha in the long run, so they let it go.

But what the people didn't know was that Danzo was smarter, unlike the Sandaime, he knew exactly how Root helped Konoha, and without it Konoha would be weak. Simple as that. Konoha, with its famous 'Will of Fire' and 'Team Work' would be seen as a very weak village in terms of military prowess. While it would be a popular choice for clients, other villages and missing-nin would take it as an invitation to attack. Konoha had never seen a day without root protecting it from behind the scenes, it just couldn't work as it use to, without root clearing things up in the background, without it Konoha could be vulnerable to any coup, any rebellion, any attacks. Most of all, it would be vulnerable during war.

Although the Shinobi of Konoha were a lot nicer than most, we were all still shinobi, we still killed in cold blood, we still stole, we were still a tool to most people. But in Konoha, our Kage's encouraged feelings, and that helped us become stronger, but it also made us weaker. Having root meant that the rest of the shinobi population could live their life without ever experiencing massacres, assassinations and infiltration into enemy territory. But many of the older generation of shinobi foresaw what the disbanding of root would come to. That was when those of ANBU standards were given a whole new job description, from village protection, they were told that they'd also be involved in assassinations and would be given the most dangerous of missions.

But sadly, the Sandaime never gave out many missions of this calibre and ANBU were just given what normal jounin were given.

Danzo however, knew of the disadvantage that Konoha would be in without root. And he made the decision to continue Root secretly, most of the time during the early days of its secret existence, it was used to defend the village. Root shinobi killed any foreign ninjas with hostile intent to Leaf, this ultimately threw the rest of Konoha into a false sense of peace, that it could really live peacefully without Root.

In the beginning of Roots underground work, Danzo had become focused on showing other countries that Konoha was still strong, that Konoha would show no mercy to any that set foot on their land. Of course the Sandaime never found out, there would be no evidence and none of the enemy Kage would ever speak openly about a failed infiltration.

To put it simply, Danzo only wanted the best for Konoha, and for Konoha to have the best, they need to be the best, and the only way to achieve that would be to gain power. It couldn't be made any simpler.

But this information wasn't what most of the shinobi knew. Not even someone as smart as Shikamaru could have figured it out if they'd lived in Konoha's 'peace' for so long. Even he was deluded.

_Kuso. I'll have time to think about this what to do later, I might even have to take time off active duty for a few days... But nevertheless, I still need to report this to the Hokage...Damn! I'm almost a day late. Shoot! I knew I shouldn't have thought about it during the journey back... _Shikamaru thought, already channelling chakra into his legs.

Shikamaru had already returned to Konoha, so he didn't really have much longer to travel. It was only a five minute run to the Hokage tower from where he was, and with the extra chakra, it would only take half the time.

But whilst he ran thinking of the Hokage's berating gaze, the Hokage was coincidently thinking about Shikamaru was as well, whilst Shikamaru was lazy, Sarutobi knew he wasn't the type to let it disrupt his professionalism on a job. So, the fact that Shikamaru, who could have returned last night, was still not here was slightly worrying.

But still, he had faith in him, so the Hokage let his thoughts drift to a more pressing matter. Danzo.

Danzo was once again trying to twist the laws to his favour, this time he had once again brought up the subject of Naruto. It wasn't the first time he had appealed to the Civilian Council for him to either be executed or placed into a 'training program' to help 'Naruto' control the Kyuubi. Danzo had always been interested in making Naruto a weapon for the leaf, the 'training program' that he would be put through would no doubt be very harsh.

The Hokage sighed,_ I can only protect him so much with my position as Hokage, and there are too many people who hate him for me to properly safeguard him without showing too much favouritism._

A soft but familiar flare of chakra came from the floor, but as soon as it came, it was gone and a boy with a very distinguishable ponytail was pushed up to the surface.

"Hokage-sama" he said.

"Report."

"Fire has delivered unsettling news."

"I thought as much" The Hokage said, his hands flicking a sign of dismissal. The ANBU in the room left and Shikamaru walked towards the door. Reaching the seal on the wall, Shikamaru placed his hand in the centre of it and sent out a single pulse of chakra and the room was sealed, nothing went in and nothing went out, most importantly no sound went in or out.

"They've almost found it." Shikamaru said, repeating what Itachi had said.

"What?"

"They've almost found the statue." Shikamaru said.

"That was much faster than we'd expected." The Sandaime said, hesitating at the beginning.

"We were already behind schedule before so we need to speed everything up now. Naruto needs to be trained and the council needs to be taken care of. I thought of a solution on the way back, it may prove to be difficult for you, but I'm afraid there is no other alternative." Shikamaru said, staring unwaveringly at the Hokage. "Excuse me for my disrespect, but Sarutobi. I think it's time for you to step down."

"Oh, was that it? Sure." Sarutobi said, chuckling at his subordinates face. "You really think that I liked coming out of retirement. Anyway, your plans always come from logic and rationality, I have no reason to not agree with you, but just so that I can satisfy my curiosity, why would I need to do that and who do you have in mind to replace me? "

"Um, ok. The reason for your abstaining from your position is that you are no longer seen as a threat and you have been far too lenient with the council. You kept trying to make them see reason but they say that as a weakness and they have used that to their advantage. The civilian council especially, they have been meddling in shinobi matters for far too long. If we want our plan to succeed, we can't have the civilian council interfering with our every decision." Shikamaru said.

The Hokage in front of him sighed then nodded sadly.

"I knew what was happening when they started appearing uninvited to clan meetings. I just never saw them to be much of a threat. They hadn't interfered with any crucial things until only recently, they seem to have been spurred by something or someone, I don't know but they seemed to have picked up some nerve somewhere. Recently they have demanded to be notified of every single decision that I make. I think that it's because of Naruto making genin." He said. "Anyway, who were you thinking of to replace me?"

"I was thinking Tsunade-hime or Kakashi if we can convince him. From what I've heard about her, as long as we can convince her to return _and_ actually _want_ to take care of Konoha, I think she'd be a good choice, at least she'd be able to have a fresh start with the Council, they wouldn't have anything on her, like favouring the 'Kyuubi brat'. She'd have a valid reason to protect Naruto. But in the case that they still vote for the execution, well let's just say that she would definitely not hold back on kicking them out of ninja decisions. I'm sure you know but technically, Hokage-sama, the civilian council can't actually vote in ninja affairs." Shikamaru said. "As for Kakashi, he's well known and respected in the leaf just as Tsunade is, and we definitely know that the council can't overrule him on anything he doesn't want overruled, the guy has just does what he wants, he might not kick them out of decisions, but I'm sure he'd make their points invalid.

"I know that Shikamaru, but since all the meeting are scribed onto paper, if they ever get out into public, the logic that we ninja use will be slightly different from a civilians point of view. If that ever happens we may have a civil war on our hands, or maybe just the eradication of the civilians but that would pretty much ruin our economy. The civilians of our village just don't understand the sealing of the Kyuubi." The Hokage said.

"But when Tsunade or Kakashi takes over, they will at least know that they can't just barge in anymore. Especially with Tsunade, she definitely won't have any reservations when it comes to hitting people like you do...no offense Hokage-sama, it's not like it's a bad thing but...you know what I mean. She'd probably just punch them through the wall if they ever tried that... Don't tell her I said that..." Shikamaru said, scratching his head.

"You mean that she would enforce the rules more and the Civilian council will finally be out of any decisions affecting ninja which means that-hey, I'm not that reserved when it comes to passing judgement." Sarutobi said, his voice raising as he finished.

"Yes, you are, you love the village and it's people too much. I for one, don't really think they deserve so much of it Sarutobi." Shikamaru said, a stern eye staring pointedly at his Hokage. "Now returning to the original topic, I'd also like to call for Jiraiya to train Naruto, and I believe that the job of finding and retrieving more information about the statue can be transferred to _her_."

"Excellent, this year's students are a bit uneven because of Neji repeating a year, so I can say that Naruto needs to be placed under a separate jonin for extra training, Jiraiya also came in today to report his findings, so we don't have to wait for him to return. He will be told before the team meetings." He said, a pleased look on his face. "But I do have a question Shikamaru. Do you still want to be put on a team?"

"Hai, but only officially, I can't waste time doing D-ranks, something that Itachi had also revealed needs my attention even more, the spy within our ranks has been found Sarutobi, it's Danzo. I need to work on that even more, for now can you work out the plans for Jiraiya to find Tsunade as well? He might have to take Naruto with him though. He's kind of the only one that actually stays in contact with her nowadays. Oh, I'll also tell _her_ about the change of what she should be looking for." Shikamaru said.

"Of course, I shouldn't be surprised that he was the one leaking information out. He's been badgering me for Akatsuki information quite just last week."

"Well, that would definitely explain where he got the information from."

"Shikamaru, I didn't give him any of the information he wasn't, so this must mean that he either had outside help or he risked being caught and then executed by stealing into a highly guarded vault in the basement of my very own house." He said.

"Right that means that he had outside help..." Shikamaru said, smirking at the Hokage's obvious sarcasm.

"Anyway, Shikamaru you're getting sorted into your teams today, and I'm going to have to brief Naruto so he's up to date, can you be present? We'll run through the plans then, come straight here after your first team meeting" The Hokage said, smiling a very familiar smile.

Shikamaru stared suspiciously at said smile. _Great, what is it now...That smile after mentioning the team meeting... KUSO _

"Please tell me that she's not my team leader."

"Then I won't tell you then, dismissed, and unseal the room Shikamaru."

**Shikamaru's POV**

I crouched down and stared through the window, the Chunin at the front of the room was giving some sort of speech about being a ninja, looking back to the student I found that not many were actually listening, including my shadow clone who was, apparently sleeping at the back.

Neji and Hinata were sitting beside 'me', both looking very bored. I chuckled but continued waiting. I needed a distraction, so I could Kawairimi safely with my clone inside, even if the teacher wasn't looking, he would still be able to sense the Jutsu being used, the stupid Jutsu was made so that your chakra _had_ to flare out so it could attach itself onto whatever target you wanted it to switch with. Where the logs that came when you didn't have a target came from, I would never know, it had actually perpetrated several research projects but they'd never been able to figure anything out.

Turning my attention back to the classroom, I couldn't help but wonder why the class was being so quiet today. I'd been waiting outside for almost half an hour and my patience was starting to run thin. _Mataku, why are they being so quiet today...Kiba do something stupid! Or even, Sakura and Ino, fight about Sasuke._

The distraction finally came when Iruka announced that he was going to tell them their teams. The whole room broke into an uproar, the girls were now screaming about how they wanted Sasuke on their team and the boys were adamantly expressing how they _didn't_ want him on their team.

I quickly went through the needed hand seals and appeared in the room, dispelling the clone just as it appeared outside as well. I was immediately met two Chakra covered hands aimed at my stomach under the table.

"Wow, what a welcome I get." I muttered, Hinata and Neji finally realised who I was and disarmed themselves, Hinata smiling and shaking her head at the same time.

"Taichou, where were you?" Neji whispered.

I sighed, and then shook my head. "Classified. Tell. You. Later." I told them, using ANBU sign language under the desk.

Since the two only really wanted to know about the mission, we fell into a practised silence.

"Team Seven will have Uchiha Sasuke, Aburame Shino and Haruno Sakura." Iruka said, waiting a while for Sakura to stop squealing.

"Team Eight will include Hyuuga Hinata, Hyuuga Neji and Nara Shikamaru. Team Nine is still in circulation and Team Ten will include Inuzuka Kiba, Yamanaka Ino and Akimichi Chouji."

"Lastly, since we had an uneven amount of students this year and Naruto, since you came last in terms of marks, you will have your own teacher until the next set of graduates." Iruka said, sending a sad look at him. Several snickers directed at him earned some students a hard glare from Iruka though.

"Right then, you may go to lunch but be back on time, you wouldn't want your teacher to wait now would you." Iruka shouted after the running students, he himself left as well.

The three of us waited until he left before I ran up to Naruto.

"Naruto! Wait up" I shouted. "I hope you realise what this means?" I asked, Hinata and Neji sending confused looks behind me.

"Yep. Either I'm really lucky and get my own personal teacher." He paused, his cheerful demeanour dampening slightly as he spoke the next possibility. "Or it came sooner than you expected Shikamaru." He said turning to me.

Only just remembering that my teammates weren't qualified to hear this information I quickly turned to give an order. "Dismissed" I said to my 'new' teammates. "I will fill you in as much as possible later."

Hinata sighed and tugged Neji's sleeve "Hai hai, Taichou." She said starting to walk away.

Neji gave in eventually and followed his cousin, but not before telling me that they expected me to be on time to the team meeting.

"Your teammates are very trusting" Naruto said wistfully.

"I know. Naruto I'm sorry, your personal training was my idea, the Hokage was just going to put you into an older team, along with the two other Genin who were supposed to be with Neji. You can still go with them on missions but I don't think you would get very many." I said. "You'd probably be focusing primarily on controlling the Kyuubi and getting stronger. You might have to start training immediately Naruto, we were already behind schedule and now that they've almost found what they need."

"What are you talking about Shika?" Naruto said.

"Oh, right you haven't been briefed yet, you'll be briefed later on. But right now, you need to be careful, the Akatsuki aren't far from their goal."

"Hey, when am I ever not careful Shika, come on I'll treat you to ramen, and it's been ages since we've eaten together, ne?" He said, a smile already stretching across his face.

"I'd like that Naruto." I smiled back, he always knows exactly what to say to make things just disappear from your mind.

When we got to Ichiraku's, I started telling Naruto about Jiraiya and told him that he and his sensei are going to be needed at the Hokage's office after their introductions. After all the important things were said and done with we just sat and talked, the subjects varied from training to what they we thought about the teams.

Just sitting there and talking reminded me of when Naruto and I had first become friends, at the beginning of our mission, when we still had to make sure that Naruto was loyal, we never really talked, I let Hinata do most of the talking whilst me and Neji only observed from a distance. Once it had been confirmed that Naruto was loyal, we could stop worrying about Naruto being an enemy. We never told him about the mission but we told him about most other things, we were even able to find the time to have friendly spars with him.

The other two, Neji and Hinata, never got very close with him but the two of us ended up being quite friendly with each other, he wasn't as close to me as Hinata and Neji, but then again Hinata and Neji weren't as close to me as Itachi and his other student was. It was all relative any ways he was still a good friend to have. Time flew by quickly as we talked and it was soon time to head back to the Academy.

"Oi, Naruto, stop eating already, we have to get there on time. If we're late for the team meeting then we'll be late for the briefing afterwards and my teammates will try to beat the shit out of me. Hell Neji gives me a good fight on his own and Hinata is very frightening when people are not punctual. You should see her whenever we work with Kakashi" I droned, already standing. "Mataku."

Naruto hardly replied, ramen continually being shoved into his mouth as he grabbed the last full bowl sitting next to him and pulled it closer. "After this last bowl Shika." He said, although it was barely comprehensible. Just as he'd finished draining his current bowl of the broth, he seamlessly pushed the next bowl to replace the old and the empty bowl somehow just appeared onto the tabletop. The old man who ran the place just picked it up to wash as if it was the most common thing.

I looked back at him and was shocked once again when I saw that his last bowl was completely empty.

"Damn Naruto, don't you ever get indigestion" I said, turning towards him at the same time. But once I saw his smug face, I just decided to let it go. "Never mind"

"Come on Shika! We've got a meeting to get to!" Naruto said, but to me his voice seemed much further away than just the seat next to me. In fact it seemed to be getting quieter.

Shocked, I looked back to the seat. Empty.

"Naruto!" I shouted before rushing after the fast disappearing boy. _Mataku, he never changes does he, always unpredictable and loud. Oh, there was also his idiocy when something wasn't important and his addiction to ramen, you can not forget that._

**End of POV**

But Shikamaru and Naruto just weren't quick enough.

As the two remaining boys ran quickly towards the academy, the loud knelling of a bell started to toll. The two boys stopped short and they looked at each other with pale faces, before running once again in the same direction, but much faster than before. They ran, into the building, making a right, then a left, then up two flights of stairs before making another left.

There looming in front of the two young children, was a door, white, but by no means meant it felt friendly. A small hand rose and touched the door knob, twisting it agonisingly slowly, then, placing only the smallest amount of pressure the child pushed and the door swung open.

The two were met with silence.

Whilst the child with blonde hair was only met with a shake of a head and a finger in the direction of his seat, the second had a very different situation. Once the blonde had sat down, the teacher in the front went to tell him the same. But that was not to be. As if a weight had been deposited on everyone's shoulders, an ample amount of pressure came, directed at the child and laced with the intent to kill. Everyone's eyes darted around, their bodies betraying them and refusing to move as they tried to find the source. Everyone except five people, the three students sitting in the back were perfectly fine, two were even chuckling silently. They were Hyuuga Neji and Hinata and the blonde that came in just before, Uzumaki Naruto. The teacher, Umino Iruka was also one of the few who were fine, however he was staring suspiciously at the three at the back, especially the young Hyuuga heiress who was apparently smirking whilst emitting said pressure at the slightly shivering kid at the front. Last of the few who were mostly alright was in fact the one in which the killing intent was directed, one Nara Shikamaru.

Shikamaru looked up to the back of the room, his eyes widening imperceptably as the young girl subtly shaped her hands into the forms of the ANBU standard sign language.

The message was clear.

You. Are. Dead.

At least that was what Shikamaru had imagined when he walked into the classroom, only to be glared at by the Hyuuga heiress.

"Hello everyone, my name is Sarutobi Asuma, will Team Seven please head towards training ground seven please, about ten minutes should be enough for you to get there." A man said. He was leaning against the doorway, with browned skin and a bored expression plastered onto his face. He was wearing the standard jounin attire with his hitaiate strapped to his head and a cigarette propped between his lips. But the man didn't stay for longer than was necessary and left in a puff of pale smoke almost immediately.

The members of said team however, couldn't leave in quite the same calm and collect manner, though it was only Sakura who was by this time screaming the room down while running out the door, both Shino and Sasuke were showing signs of wanting to run. And run they did when they got out of their seats. The training grounds weren't actually within the inner walls of Konoha, it was quite far from the academy, and would take approximately fifteen minutes, if a civilian ran there. Maybe less for fresh academy graduates...maybe.

The next few sensei made a similar greeting and exit, each stating the training ground corresponding with the team number, this included the sensei for Ino and Chouji. They were however, less than satisfied to find Kiba on their team, he was far too loud for their liking.

Ino and Chouji had spent more than their usual time in training this last year, so to bring up their skills for graduation, but they'd only put in enough time to get up to higher genin level, higher than most rookies, more like an experienced genin.

Their teacher was Yuuhi Kurenai, namely one of the few people who actually knew about Team Kage. Her introduction was only slightly more animated as she'd asked her team to raise their hands. There was also the fact that she had winked at Hinata and sent a knowing, almost pitying look at Shikamaru.

That fleeting moment was enough for Shikamaru's 'theory' at the identity of their teacher to realise that there was no other possibilities to hope for. And so he promptly let his head drop and hit the table, not really caring when his teammates and Naruto started chuckling.

"Why does it have to be _her_ when I already have Hinata mad at me." He thought. "Why does it have to be Anko." Sighing as he lifted his head off the table.

The next teacher to come in was the best in terms of real socialising, since everyone else was gone and Iruka had already left for the staffroom. Jiraiya could speak freely...almost.

"Yo, which one of you is Uzumaki Naruto?" he shouted as he walked in.

"Hey, Jiraiya." Naruto said. "Why do you even need to ask anymore, you know me?"

Jiraiya's eyes widened before he pulled Naruto aside. And judging by the melodramatic hand gestures sent our way, he was obviously trying to reprimand Naruto. Key word, trying. Naruto just laughed at him and said "Dude, he's the one that called for you to be my sensei." Jiraiya raised an eyebrow and looked over to team kage.

They took it as an invitation to introductions. Shikamaru went first since he was team leader.

"Hello and welcome back, Jiraiya. My name is Nara Shikamaru and I'm the Team Captain of Team Kage. And just to clarify your suspicions, no I am not a spy and no I do not have delusions. I am, however the person who usually assigns you your assignments on Akatsuki." He said, bluntly getting to the point.

"I'm sorry, Jiraiya-sama." Hinata said quickly.

"Shika, you didn't have to tell him immediately." Hinata told Shikamaru quietly. She then turned back and once again addressed Jiraiya in a louder voice. "My name is Hyuuga Hinata and this guy next to me is my cousin Hyuuga Neji."

"Right... I don't know how you've come across classified information but you broke the law when you spoke about the Akatsuki." Jiraiya said seriously.

Shikamaru sighed and was about to tell him to go check with the Hokage if he didn't believe them, just to prove that they were who they said they were. But he was interrupted, by a flying Anko.

"HEBI-CHAN! We haven't seen you in ages." Hinata shouted, whilst running up to Anko.

"Hina, I'm off duty. You can't call me that." Immediately causing Hinata to pout.

"Yo Anko."

"Hey Shika, what have you been up to this time, I heard you went and fired the Hokage this time."

There was a blissful moment of silence in which Shikamaru hoped there would be no screaming. But sadly it was short lived, very short lived.

"He did WHAT?" Came two simultaneous cries, namely from Hinata and Jiraiya.

"Anko, get your facts right. I _suggested_ he _retire_. Not I _told_ him to _get a new job_. Mataku." Shikamaru said. "I'll fill you in later guys, like I said before. Classified." Shikamaru said once again, just as his team was about to ask.

"What the heck is going on here!" Jiraiya shouted.

"You should probably just go and get 'introduced' to your new brat" Anko said. "I've got my own damn brats to deal with."

"Oh yeah, before I forget, Jiraiya, after team introductions, you have briefing with the Hokage. I'll see you there." Shikamaru said right after the rest of his team had performed a flashy exit with two elemental shunshin. Anko and Shikamaru left in a similar fashion but with slightly less orthodox elements, a snake shunshin and a shadow shunshin.

AN- I'm so sorry about the last time I uploaded this chapter. I'd accidentally uploaded my first draft instead and didn't notice until I uploaded the next chapter... Which was quite a while later. So sorry.


	5. Chapter 4 Please read AN

**AN- Hi guys, I'm so sorry because I'd just found out that whilst updating this chapter, I realised that the last chapter I'd posted was my first draft version. I've reposted that chapter and there have been some significant changes so please go back and read it again.**

Marshmellow212 – Thanks for the review, and also when you said what I could do to improve my writing, was that referring to the last chapter or the whole story, because the last chapter was completely raw, no spell check, no editing no nothing. It was something in which I just had to write my ideas down. So please tell me so that I know where I need to improve Thanks for pointing it out anyway!

Start of Chapter 4 -

"Hiruzen! What the hell is going on?" Jiraiya shouted, thrusting his fist repeatedly onto the doors in front of him.

Once Team Kage and their new member Anko had left him with Naruto, Jiraiya was very confused. Having just been told information that, to him, could not be true, Jiraiya fully intended to find out what was going on. But Naruto definitely didn't help when he tried asking, all Naruto was focused on was laughing at all the questions he'd asked and the only normal answers Naruto had given him was not very enlightening. They had just consisted of "Ah, don't worry, you can trust them", "its ok they won't tell." Etc. except Jiraiya couldn't just trust someone out of the blue, especially if they had information on one of the best kept secrets in Konoha. However, there was also the fact that they had Anko to back them up. If Anko thought that they were trustworthy then they couldn't be that bad could they? After all, Anko is a fully fledged jounin.

In the end he'd resorted to go to the Hokage whom he was sure would be able to shed some light onto the present situation.

This was why he is now shouting at the top of his voice and banging on the doors of the Hokage's office.

The Hokage's secretary was trying with all her might to tell him that the Hokage was busy and that his appointment with him wasn't until later. But that did nothing to help.

**Sarutobi's POV**

"Hiruzen! What the hell is going on?" A muffled voice came from the doors direction.

"Damn" I said. My head fell forward and landed none too softly onto my waiting hands, breathing a sigh as I wondered why no one had taken the initiative to explain things to Jiraiya before something like this happened.

"But Jiraiya-sama, you can't go in there!" I sighed once again as I heard Saiki shout once again. Then I got up and walked to the door.

I opened it.

"It's okay Saiki, he can come in." I said along with a gesture for Jiraiya to get inside quickly. After closing the door I turned to face a rather grumpy looking Jiraiya. "What do you want Jiraiya?"

He raised an eyebrow, knowing that I knew full well what he was talking about.

"Fine, let me rephrase, who did you see and what did they tell or not tell you." I said.

"I met three kids and Anko, they told me that their 'Team Captain' fired you, was the one who called me back to teach Naruto and was also the one who assigned me Akatsuki missions. " He shouted. "Let me ask you again Hiruzen. What the hell is going on?"

Sarutobi sighed before starting to explain. He didn't get far until he was interrupted.

"Nani!"

_This is going to be one long day _He thought.

Meanwhile at the training grounds Team Kage was getting on with their team introductions and their 'Genin Test'. Although they were obviously not Genin level, it was still a formality.

"Right! I know who you are and you know who I am, so we can just skip to the second boring part" Anko said, leaning back onto a tree.

"..." All three of Anko's 'Genin' blinked.

She blinked, head tilting slightly to her right.

"Actually, I already know all of your skills and I already know about your teamwork. Heh, that means we're done!" Anko shouted, as if she'd only just realised.

"Mataku" Shikamaru said before propping himself up. "Since we've got this done and over with, we have a meeting to go to. Knowing Naruto, he probably didn't answer any of Jiraiya's questions so he's probably still at the academy so we should probably stop by and pick him up. "_Mataku, why did we even come here, we could have just stayed at the Academy._

The others just nodded and followed his lead as he stood and started walking.

"Ne, Taichou... Didn't you say that you'd explain everything during the team introductions?" Hinata suddenly asked.

"Oh yeah, I forgot." Shikamaru said after pausing for a while. "Oh well, you'll probably get a run through when we get to the office anyway."

"Aa, sure"

When the group reached the Academy they went in and walked towards Iruka's classroom. Only to be met with an unwavering stream of loud cackles. Hinata, who was at the front rolled her eyes and smiled before pushing the door open.

"Naruto-kun!" Hinata shouted as the door was opened.

"Hinata-chan! What are you doing here?" Naruto said, his laughing finally fading.

"Naruto, did you forget that you have a meeting with the Hokage now." Shikamaru said.

"Umm...No, uh I was um" Naruto paused "I was just about to head there!"

'_Mataku' _Shikamaru thought

In record time, Shikamaru managed to subdue Naruto's hyper behaviour and brought the group to the Hokage's office. Naruto having calmed down had a much more serious expression.

As the group entered the room, the two people currently in there both quietened and turned to face them.

"Hokage-sama, shall we begin the briefing?" Shikamaru said smirking, obviously amused at the Hokage's exasperation.

The Hokage waved his hand, beckoning Shikamaru to come closer. Shikamaru, whilst confused, complied and walked up till he stood directly in front of him.

He leaned forward and glared.

"What took you so long? Do you have any idea how much work it was to explain everything to Jiraiya! He doesn't know _anything_! And don't even get me started on the how loud he was and how many questions he asked, irrelevant ones at that!" He whispered angrily.

"Hey, we were quite quick, or would you rather have had us actually do the test and introductions?" Shikamaru said, his previous smirk still lingering.

Sighing, the Hokage closed his eyes and turned towards Jiraiya and began rubbing his temple.

"Jiraiya, Shikamaru. Shikamaru, Jiraiya." He said, gesturing to each person. "Jiraiya, Prodigal Genius. Prodigal Genius, Self-proclaimed super pervert and the one you've been ordering around on things related to Akatsuki."

"Yoroshiku" Shikamaru said, extending his hand.

Jiraiya, while he was still looking apprehensive, also extended his hand. "Yoroshiku" He said.

Both of them inclined their heads slightly before returning to the matter at hand.

"Now, since you have seen so much already, I believe that you are entitled to the basic explanations to what is actually going on." Shikamaru said to his team. "You both know the very basic fact that it has something to do with a rising criminal organisation called Akatsuki. What you don't know is that they are after the jinchuuriki and that it is composed of S-class missing ninja."

Neji raised an eyebrow and smirked. "Ok, we admit that the jinchuuriki thing is new to us but do you honestly think so lowly of us? S-class secret, kept from even your teammates. We'd expect this thing to be pretty dangerous."

"And because of that we were pretty worried whenever you had your bouts of sadness. We know that you've always wanted to tell us and we know that even now we probably won't hear the whole truth" Hinata said. "But that doesn't matter because we know that you're strong. The only thing that really worries us is what mental state you might be in when in danger."

Shikamaru shook his head. "You're right, but know that I'll be fine." He said. "My mental state is and will always be controlled in the midst of battle, I am lucky to be able to forget most of my troubles among adrenalin."

Hinata smiled and said. "Well that's good Shika."

"Right, we need to continue the briefing, so the only other thing that you two need to know is that the baseline of the plan is to protect the jinchuuriki, namely Naruto in this village, and you need not know the others. So if you ever see Naruto in danger, please help him." Shikamaru said.

"Sure!" Hinata said

"Hey! I'm not useless you know!" Naruto said, playfully punching Shikamaru's arm.

Smiling at Naruto he thought '_Yeah, of course you're not useless but you're pretty much useless at ninjutsu with no one to learn from. The only thing you're really good at is taijutsu and that's pretty much only because you'd practiced the Academy style to such extremes that you managed to improve it. The fact that your stamina is incredible and that the Kyuubi helps heal your wounds doesn't hurt.' _

He then looked at Neji, seeing no signs of disagreement to what he'd previously said he took that as another 'sure'. Looking back up at the Hokage he inclined his head as a signal to carry on.

"Right, now I'm really sorry Shikamaru, but since you've told them so much I believe that they could be useful. They will not have any missions of that outside of the village but they will be told to help train Naruto and weed out any Root members in the village." The Hokage said, not even stopping when Shikamaru tried to interfere. "Do you accept?"

"Hai" The two replied in unison.

"B-but" Shikamaru stuttered.

"Then you will begin your mission tomorrow, start gathering information and you can start...eradicating the threats as soon as possible." The Hokage said, once again ignoring Shikamaru's interruption.

"Hai" Hinata said while Neji just nodded.

"Oi, Hokage-sama!" Shikamaru said, once again trying to stop the Hokage.

"Right then, you will be given more information on the suspects after the briefing."At this point it seemed that Shikamaru had given up, his head in his hands and sighing continuously.

"Mataku, fine then, but you need to promise me that they get no missions related to the Akatsuki and that they do not meet my other teammates. That may be cause to huge repercussions." Shikamaru said, his hands waving and gesturing to make his point clear. However, gesturing may work for the average person, but for someone who regularly lives his life with as little movement as possible, waving and gesturing _while_ speaking was almost a miracle, not to mention it was very funny.

Covering up their snickers, Neji and Hinata were given a scroll with a blood seal along the edge, which they were told to spread their blood on it after the Hokage had made the snake and dog seal, their blood now enabled them to open the many scrolls related to their mission. The blood seals however weren't just limited to finding spies within the village, it also included the information on the Akatsuki and the jinchuuriki. So they were told if they wanted any information, they were to formally request the scroll in which the information was stored directly from the Hokage. They were then dismissed.

Continuing with the briefing the Hokage went on to discuss the biggest problem.

"The Akatsuki being so close to finding the bijuu medium is worrying, this means that they would be able to start hunting them much earlier than we had anticipated. Our estimation was that we would have another year before they would find it. But it seems that Akatsuki may have either found some more information or they'd followed a different path of logic that hadn't been considered before." The Hokage said. He turned to Jiraiya, as if to ask for confirmation on either of the theories.

"Well, so far intelligence on the Akatsuki is saying that they haven't found any new information or that any of them have had a breakthrough, but this is only from the limited amount of contacts that I've been able to integrate into the Akatsuki. The Akatsuki really only have ten members, any others who have any affiliation with them are rarely updated on information." Jiraiya said. "Where did you even get that information? And how do you even know that it's accurate?"

"Rest assured Jiraiya-sama, the information comes from a very reliable source, and there is a very low chance that it would be wrong."Shikamaru said. "Fire said that he would meet me again at a much safer time and update me on the details, the only reason he had come out at this time was because the ample amount of information he has given me was just a warning, extra precautions were needed and very little information was leaked. The only thing that he really needed to tell me was that we had to get our act together and bring our behind schedule plan up to date."

Jiraiya frowned when Shikamaru's contact was addressed by code-name. "Wait a minute, who's Fire?"

Shikamaru opened his mouth to answer, but was cut off. "Jiraiya." The Hokage said in a serious tone. "That is classified information, please refrain from inquiring the identities of any other people referred to by code-name."

Jiraiya, surprised by the sudden grave tone that the Hokage used immediately returned the order with a cautious "Hai"

Most of the time, the Hokage was quite lax with the rules, so this means that if he wasn't trusted enough to release the information to, it had to be very important, something that even a trusted and loyal shinobi would not be privy to the information unless absolutely need. But even though it was technically part of his mission as well, he at least knows that it wouldn't affect it.

Recently the shinobi countries had fallen into a tense peace, a peace that convinced civilians and many ninja but not the people involved in the politics. Meetings of all sorts were tense and filled with subtle threats.

Yes, many countries were still at each other's throats since the last shinobi war, usually tensions between countries would have cooled by now, but this generation of Kage's seem to be rather content in holding grudges. Especially since the war had many shinobi fighting with underhanded means, many of these things would cause the peace minded civilians to wretch. Since most of the villages income came from the civilians, many of these 'incidents' were used as blackmail. Especially since there wasn't a post war treaty. The prolonged tension may also be because every Nation had many fatalities, the war had quickly become a war of attrition.

In an effort to continue replace their soldiers, the nations turned to their younger generation. Simply because of their inexperience many children had also faced death.

Jiraiya hadn't seen the third this serious since the war. So in this case the best possible way he could be of the most use would just be to follow orders. Because he couldn't know all the information, anything that may be seen as misjudgement may just be because of lack of information on his part. After all who better to conduct something of this scale than the Hokage. He doesn't have that title just because of his strength, he was a great strategist as well. But..._Why the HELL is the twelve year old KID privy to more information that ME! The great and powerful JIRAIYA-SAMA!_

The briefing had continued smoothly, deciding that they would discuss that subject again when they received the new information. The next thing they discussed was Shikamaru's suggestion to find a new Hokage.

When the Hokage announced that he would follow Shikamaru's plan after Shikamaru was asked to explain his logic once again for the sake of Jiraiya, Jiraiya couldn't help but agree, the reasons were sound and this way Danzo would have a lot of the influence on the ninja taken away from him.

But throughout the whole time, they had forgotten one thing. Naruto.

At this point Naruto was still just listening, he was also walking around, flipping through books, opening drawers, drawing, poking things, sitting on the sofa, talking to the secretary, trying to work the Hokage's crystal ball, eating ramen, drinking, jumping and a lot more. But he was listening. So when Shikamaru finally realised that Naruto was actually still in the room, they had no need to further brief him. Shikamaru and the Hokage had prematurely decided to give him as much information as Jiraiya, so that was fine.

"Ahaha, gomen gomen." Shikamaru said. The briefing had just ended and they were stood outside the Hokage's office. Jiraiya and Naruto had arranged to start training the next day so the sannin had gone off to find more permanent living arrangements.

"Huh? Oh, that's fine, I couldn't contribute much anyway. Just listening got me everything I needed anyway." Naruto said. "Hey, are you hungry? Let's go have ramen!"

"..."

"Naruto, we've already had ramen today though." Shikamaru said after a pause.

"So?"

"Mataku, you never change do you."Shikamaru said under his breath. "Right, I have to start on contacting Ice and sorting the Team things. So I can't get ramen with you."

"Dang, oh well see ya!"Naruto shouted and ran off towards Ichiraku's.

Shikamaru just waved.


	6. Chapter 5

Start of Chapter 5 –

It was just about half an hour after the group had their meeting, but Shikamaru was already working. He jumped from roof to roof observing the people below regularly, he was looking for his team. He'd started to look for them after Naruto had left for ramen. He needed to tell them how the team was going to continue on with all of their jobs, they could not risk having people notice that they hadn't done any D-ranks or that they'd never done the test or anything like that, it was just too risky.

Since it was only about three o'clock in the afternoon, he'd have thought they'd still be outside instead of returning home. Anko he'd already spotted and was about to head over when he saw a familiar face, his half covered face buried inside a bright orange book.

He was making his way through the bustling crowd, not stopping once to look at what the shops had to offer. Though big, Konoha was still quite a crowded place, it had a lot more civilians than the average hidden village would have but it helped their economy greatly. The streets were usually filled with busy shops and there was never really a quiet day around the civilian districts.

Shikamaru jumped down to meet him, wondering if he'd seen his team somewhere, sometimes when Neji got bored he would seek out either Anko or Kakashi to train with, since they were pretty much the only people that knew about them and he could not beat. Shikamaru himself could only manage to defeat him because of his strategic planning applied to what he knew Neji he could do beforehand, the same came with Hinata. If Shikamaru were to fight any of them one on one with just taijutsu he would never be able to win.

But that wasn't the only reason. Kakashi and Anko needed to be briefed on their secondary part of the plan. Since everything on the schedule was being pushed forward, they are needed earlier as well.

"Kakashi-san! Have you seen my team anywhere?" Shikamaru said.

"Weren't you just with them doing the team introductions? I've only just finished mine." Kakashi said, finally putting down his book.

"...Really Kakashi, you're the only team leader who started their introductions two hours later." Shikamaru said "And anyway, we'd just come back from the Hokage and we need to arrange how we're going to keep up the missions _and_ keep everyone thinking that we're Genin."

"Can't say I can help you there, I haven't seen them today at all."Kakashi said.

"Oh well, I've found Anko at Izakaya so I might just ask her."Shikamaru said.

"If I see them then I'll tell them you were looking" Kakashi said.

"Sure, thanks. Oh and one more thing, if you could come into one of the back rooms in Izakaya in about fifteen minutes, I need to brief you on something." Shikamaru said quietly, in fact it was almost a whisper.

Kakashi once again opened his book and waved his hand, his one visible eye crinkling at the corners as he disappeared in a puff of white smoke. Nothing could have given away the fact that he'd received the last words Shikamaru had told him, but Shikamaru knew he did. Kakashi was just that kind of person, not missing a single thing but going at his own pace.

Looking around it didn't seem as if it had disturbed anyone, if anything the people began rolling their eyes and shaking their heads '_Ehh, Kakashi must frequent this area, people usually get very annoyed when ninja just come and go with the shunshin.' _Shikamaru thought

-1-

Kakashi frowned as he came out of his shunshin, after he'dhe'd run to the end of the street where Izakaya was and snuck in. He didn't know what Shikamaru might need to brief him on, as far as he knew Shikamaru wasn't doing anything that might involve him. He'd hidden in the far corner of the bar, opposite of where he could see Anko. All he had to do now was wait.

The bar had a very typical tavern-like theme, like most in Konoha. The furniture were made of wood and it was lit by candlelight, though that didn't mean it wasn't lit well. It was a bar that was very well known, mostly by the shinobi. The owner was a retired Kunoichi and she had done her best to make the bar completely shinobi proof, seals enhancing the durability of the wood, rooms in the back with sound-proofing seals, of course, only able to be activated by the blood of a Konoha shinobi.

Since the bar was already a popular place for shinobi, the Hokage figured it would be most secure if his ninja were able to register a sample of their blood when they first sign their loyalty to Konoha.

The room was generally rectangular, with the exceptions of any pillars dotted around. One of the shorter sides was where the door was located. The bar stretched all the way along the right side, the rest of the place was split between the eating area and the dance floor, though the dance floor _did _receive a much bigger portion.

At the back there was three closed doors, two were the obvious male and female restrooms but the other, in the middle, had a blood seal on it and it led to the back rooms, each of the rooms inside already had a built in sound-proofing seal and it also had another seal to secure the door as well, for safety reasons the seals don't stop anyone from leaving. There were also other seals dotted around the room with other abilities.

Right now, there were about ten small rooms there, each like a cubicle with two rows of bench-like chairs connected to the side walls and a table in the middle it could just about fit three people on each row.

Since it was still early, there were barely any people in the bar, but since it was open twenty four-seven it acted like a restaurant in the day so the people would most likely be at the eating area. Anko seemed to be the only one at the bar, there wasn't even a bartender. But she was there, enjoying a box of dango and drinking from a bottle of Asahi.

Kakashi watched as Shikamaru stopped at the door and stared at him. Shikamaru though, seemed to pay no mind and walked over Anko and sat down next to her. She looked over, not really surprised at his coming.

"Hey." Anko said, tipping back the brown bottle again.

"Hey."He paused. Taking the time to wave his hand and order a glass of water. "Have you seen the rest of the team?" Shikamaru asked.

"Hmm, they said that they'd returned home to work on something the Hokage gave them. Something related to that S-class secret you're always working on. Did you finally get round to telling them about that? Can you tell me?" Anko asked, her smile tearing across her face. It was slightly disturbing.

'_S-class Secret?' _Kakashi thought. _'Of course, he's the one in charge of the secret Hokage-sama keeps mentioning. I should have known Shikamaru's what he meant when he told me it was a Nara.'_ He shifted his hand, pulling up his hitaiate to allow for his sharingan to help him see better. Originally he'd just been lip-reading normally and that was fine, but now that it was getting interesting, he couldn't afford to miss a single thing.

"Gomen, they found out by accident, too much was happening, and they just happened to be around." Shikamaru said, finishing his water. "Mind if you wait here for a while, I'll need to brief you all on something."

"Un."Anko replied, still swallowing a mouthful of beer. "Sure."

"Sankyu...Anko-chan" And with that, he was gone, sinking into his own shadow.

Anko stopped, spinning on her stool she turned to face the spot Shikamaru had just stood and whispered "Anko...chan...ka?" Before slightly shaking her head and ordering a bottle of warm sake, she then quickly downed the first half of the bottle.

Kakashi sighed _'Looks like she's still hung up on Sukoshi.'_

He thought back to what Shikamaru had told him to do and shrugged. _'No harm in being early' _He thought as he made his way to the back rooms.

Shikamaru came up from his shunshin, still smiling at his most recent success, he'd finally managed to make the grey patches in his shadow realm look closer to black. In the beginning, when he had just begun training, changing the brighter colours was much easier. Nowadays though, he had to change colours like grey and brown bit by bit into black. Since the colours were closer to black, one would think that it would be easier but apparently these colours had to be worked on shade by shade and each shade barely had any difference, only that little bit darker. Most Nara's ended up having just black, grey and brown, sometimes navy. But most just slowly darkened the colours steadily over time, most would never get it reduced to even two colours let alone getting it to change to pure black.

He'd come up at the front gate of the Hyuuga compound and the guards had already opened the gates. '_I must come too often' _He thought offhandedly, walking briskly up to the main house...house.

He knocked, and not long after a young branch member came and opened to the door and escorted him up to Hinata's room. '_I really must come too often, everyone seems to know exactly why I'm here. Mataku.'_

Shikamaru lifted his hands up from out of his pocket to knock, but almost just as he'd poised his hand, the big and exquisite door was flung back and a glowing Hinata stood in its place.

"Shika-kun! Thank you so much!" She shouted, "I almost expected you to carry us out of the office when the Hokage decided to let us in on the secret, even if it's just a bit of it."

Behind her Neji smirked and watched as Shikamaru struggled to say anything in reply, in fact he only managed to fit in a quiet "Heh?" before Hinata started speaking again.

"Before you were so protective of us and we knew that your mission must have been extremely dangerous, but we've always wanted to help. And now we know that it really is just as dangerous as you'd implied, but the fact that you have more people working on it makes it so much safer as well you know." Hinata gushed, and she would have continued if Shikamaru hadn't interrupted.

"Mataku. Hinata, you know very well that the risks in letting more people in, is much more dire than having only the necessary people know. Even if it is safer and it would be done faster, that doesn't cancel out the risk that someone may find out and completely ruin the plan." He said. "Now before we go into this subject any further, let me tell the two of you why I came over."

Neji walked up until he was next to Hinata and said "We need to find a way to keep up our image as Genin don't we?"

"Exactly, we can't have anyone know hide nor tail about this mission, even the fact that we have a mission above a C-rank must be kept secret." Shikamaru said. "I have Anko waiting at Izakaya's, we can continue the discussion there, even though the Hyuuga compound is usually secure we can't risk saying anything more here."

With that the other two nodded and followed Shikamaru in performing the specific seals needed for their respective shunshin.

Once they had reached it, they wasted no time in greetings and walked straight towards the back rooms, Shikamaru in the lead as he walked past every single room seeming to concentrate until he stopped abruptly in front of one. He cut his thumb and placed it onto the middle of the seal, almost immediately the seal glowed orange and indicated the door was unlocked.

Opening the door, he gestured for his team to walk in first, Neji and Hinata sat on the bench on the left whilst Anko sat on the empty bench on the right, Shikamaru to sit next to her.

He closed the door once again placed the still bleeding hand to lock the door with the seal stretching from the door to the wall, going over the crack. He then turned to the wall behind Anko, edging in slightly between the bench and the table before once again pulling his thumb across to make sure it was activated, a red glow told him that it was. He then walked in, staring at the far corner of the ceiling, the ceiling was high and there was a particular spot that was kept shrouded in darkness. He smirked slightly before looking back to his team.

"Right then, down to business." He said, sitting down in the process. "Firstly, Anko, you'll be fully briefed now, you and Kakashi were actually meant to be briefed when the Akatsuki make it known that they would begin their attempts to capture the jinchuuriki, but since you were made our Team Leader, you guys will need to be briefed now." He said, speaking straight through Anko's confused "What?" at the mention of Akatsuki.

Realising he should have briefed her first he explained. "Yes, this is about the S-class secret I'm involved in" He said answering Anko's unspoken question. He then went on to explain the things that Hinata and Neji had been privy to, mostly speaking about the problems to arise in the village rather than anything substantial about the Akatsuki.

"Now Hinata and Neji have been given the mission to eradicate any found spies within the village, most of them should have a connection to root, since we have just been given the information that Danzo was the one leaking our information. Anko, right now, we have too much to do, so we will need to be able to do what we need to do without being suspicious in the fact that we have barely done any missions." Shikamaru said. "Right now, Hinata and Neji, whilst they are still in their reconnaissance stage will be able to fit in one D-rank mission every few days, I however will most likely be in and out of the village. I am needed to pass the information out to our spies outside."

"Actually, our reconnaissance stage will not last very long, the information given to us is quite detailed and several are already confirmed to be the spies, all we really need to do now is to confirm the others and make sure that there are no others that have not been suspected." Neji said. "In fact we believe that it will be done in about two months."

"That's fine, by then the chunin exams will have come up and we will become chunin, anyway." Shikamaru said.

"Okay, so how are we actually going to do this?" Anko asked.

"You actually play quite a big part in this part of the plan Anko, we need you to say that you're going to focus more on training, each sensei has their own method of teaching and they report a basic training plan to the Hokage, most teachers focus more on team building and doing more missions, gradually doing less and focus more on training as they get older." He said, pressing a button on the edge of the table.

He continued on to explain. "But some teachers do focus more on training, these teams depend heavily on the teacher, if the teacher is good then the team is generally better since they are more experienced combat-wise and their team work will have been more focused on battle. But if the teacher chooses this method and doesn't teach their students well it could very well end up as a huge disadvantage." He paused before asking. "Anyone want anything to eat or drink? I forgot to eat lunch with Naruto stuffing his face."

He was met with a few nods and a couple of sures and their orders, Anko wanted a box of Dango, Hinata just wanted a small platter of sushi and Neji opted for a small bowl of rice with a grilled fish. He himself wanted a bowl of rice with barbecued pork cutlet.

"Right, now hopefully, we will be able to organise it so I will be in town when we are supposed to do our D-ranks. But if not we'll need to-" He was interrupted by a knock on the door.

Putting chakra into the seal in the middle of the door, the door outside flashed a three by three grid, and each box numbered from one to nine. The waitress outside pressed the ten digit code in and the seal to lock the door faded, the normal turnkey lock however, was still locked and so Shikamaru stood up and opened the door and repeated everyone's orders as well as ordering four cups of green tea and a kettle for refills. The door closed and the Shinobi continued their discussion.

"Right, so normally I won't be able to schedule any of the times that I'll be around for, but the Akatsuki hold a meeting every two weeks in each month, so those times will be when I'm usually in the village. But it can't be guaranteed because my contacts aren't all in the Akatsuki." Shikamaru said. "If you have scheduled a mission when I'm not here, the best thing to do is either have Anko make a Kage Bunshin to replace me or just say I didn't bother coming or I called in sick."

"So we'll be reporting that we're going to have training sessions everyday save for two or three days of missions every two weeks?" Neji asked.

"Yeah, pretty much."

"So...Do you actually want me to train you, or can you just work yourself? Because, right now, I'm not sure my techniques are very helpful to you. Your team specialises in stealth and assassination, and whilst mine are for assassinations as well, I've not got much in the stealth department." Anko said.

Before Shikamaru could answer however, a bell rang and a small led light flashed at the opening of the wooden dumbwaiter. Since Hinata was the closest, she opened it and pulled out the food, placing each tray in front of the person who ordered it. When she closed it again, it returned up and within moments came back down with four cups of green tea and an especially large kettle of hot water to provide for refills.

There was a quiet moment where the four had started to eat, Shikamaru started speaking after devouring half the bowl of rice and two slices of his barbecued pork cutlet.

"It would be good if you could teach us more on offense, even though we are fully qualified jonin, we are still considered weak in terms of offense. Neji and Hinata" He said nodding to each of them as he swallowed. "Though are more capable than I am, but in general, we would not fare well in a battle with other more experienced jonin."

"I agree, we specialized early so we have trained a lot more for stealth, assassination and infiltration, so open battle is always disadvantageous to us." Neji said chewing on his fish. "Normally our family style is sufficient enough and that would easily allow for us to easily defeat any chunin. But if we faced a fully fledged jonin we'd have trouble."

"And you could say that we could outsmart them but that always depends on what's available. We usually have less trouble maneuvering around any rookie jounin but any with more experience could probably trounce us easily." Hinata said before popping a piece of cucumber sushi into her mouth.

"Mmkay. So in general, I'll just concentrate on teaching you taijutsu and ninjutsu... You know I'm not considered amazing at either right?" She said, shrugging and fiddling with the Dango stick.

She was right, Anko specialized in her summons, she'd mastered the art of summoning to the extent that Orochimaru's snake based jutsu are no longer used as ninjutsu to her. Whilst normally you'd have to create a separate route from the summoning world, Anko doesn't need to go the long way round, all she has to do is manipulate her summoning so it matches the Jutsu.

Following this, she can use her summons in almost any situation, without the need to perform hand seals and place her hand onto a flat surface, her summoning was at least five times faster than the normal summoning. It was also much better in the way that she didn't need to use half the usual amount of chakra needed.

"That's fine, you'll be working with Hatake so that should make easier right?" Shikamaru said.

"Kakashi? But how are you going to get him to teach us while we-" Hinata asked.

"That is none of your concern, his part in this mission will be classified on the same level as mine."Shikamaru said.

"Mou, Shika-kun. You're so serious nowadays, what happened to the Shikamaru that always had time for regular cloud watching."Hinata said, as she peeled the raw salmon off the last of her sushi and dipped it into some soy sauce. She then placed it back on and picked up the whole thing to eat.

"Sigh, that Shikamaru is locked away for the peaceful times Hina. He can come out when all this is settled" He said with a smile.

No one spoke.

He sighed and said. "Dismissed."

When nobody followed his order he only repeated it calmly. "Dismissed."

Neji and Hinata stood and filed out silently, looking back only once with pride in their eyes. Shikamaru smiled at them. He stood up and Anko assumed that was to allow her to leave but as she stood he only locked the door again.

"No, you stay Anko."He said, using one hand to push her down onto her seat again. He went on to sit on the opposite side of where he'd been originally, opposite her. He smiled at her confused look and said. "This won't take too long, I just need to make sure Kakashi got everything."

"Kakashi?" Anko inquired.

Shikamaru gathered up the trays and placed them back into the dumbwaiter along with the four cups and the now empty kettle.

"Yeah, you can come down now." He said looking at a corner in the ceiling. Anko stared up along with him.

"Damn, Shikamaru, I wanted to scare her." Kakashi said sitting down next to Anko. She turned quickly and gasped.

Shikamaru laughed and shook his head.

"You _did_ get to scare her, and anyway, I looked at a different corner so she wouldn't see you anyway." Shikamaru said.

Kakashi shrugged.

"Hey!" Anko said.

"Now did you get all that Kakashi?" Shikamaru said.

"Yeah, but it wasn't all that new to me. Hokage-sama already filled me in a bit." He said. "I think I was the only ANBU he called upon to do anything related to it. I'm guessing that's because I'd be filled in later anyway."

"So you were here the whole time weren't you Kakashi" Anko said, shaking her head. "I really need work on sensing people."

"Yes Anko, yes you do." Kakashi said, eliciting a glare from Anko.

Shikamaru chuckled at the exchange before speaking again.

"Anko, you and Kakashi have another job to do. You two are in charge of raising security, this village is going to be in constant danger and we want everyone to be alert." Shikamaru said smiling. "What I want you two to do is to make sure that happens, we can't alert the whole village by raising the official security and increasing patrols, no that might alert the other villages and make them think we're expecting war."

Shikamaru waited, the other two only just realising what he was implying. Anko grinned widely.

"Hell yeah!" She shouted. "Legal pranking."

"Not quite, it might not be quite as elaborate as you might think." Shikamaru said.

"You want us to test individuals right?" Kakashi said. "You want us to break in and maybe move things out of order, not extreme but enough to put them on constant guard right. Maybe flash small amounts of chakra out in the streets right?"

Shikamaru smirked "Exactly."

"Oh Fuck you... I was really looking forward to pranking Asuma, he's still trying to pull those ridiculously cheesy moves on Kurenai. Damn..." Anko said pouting, she mourned her lost chance for only a moment before asking a more relevant question "So, any targets we need to focus on? Or is this just a general thing?"

"Not really, Genin and Chunin may not realise immediately though so you may want to spend a bit more time on them. You might want to make some a bit more obvious though." Shikamaru told them. "Also you need to realise that this will put you in a lot of danger. As your actions become more known, people will become more cautious, as is your goal, and you will not be protected by anyone if you get caught. This isn't an official mission, the Hokage can't protect you."

"That's fine, you chose us because you trust us to do our job. And anyway, like anyone can top me in stealth." Anko proclaimed loudly.

"Yeah right, if you're that good at stealth then you've just labelled me as god." Kakashi said.

"And since you've just said _that_ Kakashi, _you've_ just labelled me as a titan" Shikamaru said smirking. "Face it you two, you can't beat me when it comes to stealth."

Anko glared, and Kakashi laughed and said. "You're right, but you don't get a place in our competition, not everyone has two full years of intensive stealth training."

"Anyway you know what to do with your mission, so I'm not needed anymore. But just for your information Kakashi, you might want to prepare yourself, the Sandaime is gonna retire and you may need to get ready for the Kage position because I really don't think that Tsunade will come back to be our Kage." Shikamaru said as he left the room.

"Wait, what?" Kakashi said.

Anko laughed quietly next to him. "I believe congratulations are in order Kakashi." She said, and then she sighed. "Remember the times when you were the too young jounin commanding the elder ones in the war."

Kakashi shook himself out of his reverie and answered. "Yeah, I really was hoping that that wouldn't need to happen in this generation."He looked at her. "We used to get so annoyed at them, wondering how they just couldn't understand some things"

Anko laughed again. "I Remember. It got a bit better when I became you're ANBU partner, maybe that was because I had someone to help me explain. We were always at the front-lines, in charge of a squad or platoon. And things were so stressful, especially trying to keep everyone in line and making the plans. We were so bad at strategic planning in the beginning. Imagine how hard it must be for him Kakashi." She said.

"It must be very difficult for him. The fighting is easy, you just have to train, but planning ahead, guessing at what the enemy will do next is incredibly hard to do, and with so little help. He isn't even allowed to give the whole story to his teammates."

Kakashi shook his head and stood gesturing out the door. "Who do you think should be our first targets? Genin, Chunin or Jonin?"

She looked up and laughed, standing up with him and left the room before saying. "I think we could have some fun with the Jonin first, I really want to start with Asuma, even though it won't be pranking. At least I still get to mess with him."

AN- Not a very interesting chapter but it does give you information. This _is _a slow build up though. I think I'll put some action into the next chapter so you can look forward to that

R&R Please and Thank you


End file.
